Tuesday, 4 January 2011

Today someone handed me a copy of the very cool french culture mag "VoxPops" in which Andy & me are featured. We were asked over to Paris to discuss culture and politics, salon style , with Benoit Armand, the spokesperson for the French Parti Socialiste .

A nice guy and a reminder, if it's needed, that French political discourse is very different to what we have in the UK or US, the one-sided triumph of the ill . "I'm not here to save Capitalism" says Benoit " ...but to destroy it!".

A cool dude in his leather jacket, straight out of A Bout De Souffle, I can't imagine his equivalent in Britain ever saying anything like this, terrified as they are even to use the "S" word , still in thrall to the criminal gamblers who brought us to our knees and asked us to pay the bill. I felt like some neo-con when I said great art and public art were usually mutually self-exclusive , quoting the great soliloquy from Harry Lime in the Third Man . We are all cartoons. I look with envy at France, with its Puligny Montrachet ( '95, évidemment! ), unpasteurised cheeses and gorgeous boys and girls frolicking in teargas lobbed by vicious flics . The good life!